Larry the Shoe Shine Guy’s Plan for the City

Larry Moore, the formerly homeless shoeshine guy, may turn into San Francisco’s version of Joe the Plumber. He’s starting to see himself as a symbol for the city’s lack of support for working guys who want to pull themselves out of poverty.

Moore, whose shine stand is at the corner of Market and New Montgomery, experienced another outpouring of support last week when I wrote a column about his one-year anniversary of being in business for himself.

Chronicle Paul Chinn

Larry Moore wears a shirt and tie except when the Giants are playing. Then he goes with a team jacket.

Moore had gotten another tax bill from the city for over $300 and generous readers wrote in to offer contributions to defray the cost. Moore was grateful, but he spurned advances by city officials who wanted to get him on Supplemental Security Income, find him city-assisted housing, and get him on a free health care plan.

The city’s homeless policy coordinator, Dariush Kayhan, said that Moore, has “gotten a lot of assistance and he mostly turns it down.”

“What they aren’t getting is that Larry doesn’t want those things,” Moore said. “I want to do it on my own. We’ve got 18- or 19-year-old kids on food stamps. This isn’t a welfare city.”

Moore isn’t completely there yet. He’s getting a reduced rate at a CitiSuites apartment, and he’s willing to accept the checks that readers send in for support. He has gotten potential job offers from readers but hasn’t followed up on all of them.

But he is out on the street nearly every day, unless the weather is bad, and has stayed clean and sober for more than a year. And, if you sit down for a shine, be prepared to engage in conversation. Moore is all about customer interaction. He’s reliable, hard-working, and honest.

It seems as if there ought to be a way to encourage the Larry Moore’s of San Francisco to stick with their program. With “Care Not Cash,” the city has a well-regarded housing program, but housing seems to be as far as it goes. Once clients get SSI to cover the rent, there’s very little incentive to find work, create a small business, or be a productive citizen.

That’s Moore’s point, as someone who was sleeping on a piece of cardboard under a bridge overpass a year ago.

“This has to be bigger than you and me,” he said. “This needs to go national. We need to encourage people to work on their own.”